I want to see a world where everyone is allowed to thrive; where love and compassion, kindness and forgiveness are not merely values we intellectually hold in common, but we are actualizing collectively. It is not an easy journey, this space of time between our Fear and our awakening to Love. We need to lean on one another.

Category Archives: Planting

I was reading a Facebook announcement posted by my son-in-law for a guerrilla gardening event he is holding at the library where he works. I remember how much fun he had last Spring when he got a group of enthusiastic youth from the community together and made a pile of seed bombs and then went out through the neighborhoods “bombing” all kinds of unlikely places to make them beautiful this summer. Now they are going to go around the town planting spring bulbs and other things that will bloom come the spring. I love the concept. We’re encouraging our youth to sneak around–or go boldly in broad daylight–doing small things that nurture beauty and life and respect for the spaces where we live and work rather than defacing and uglifying them.

It occurs to me that this is a great metaphor for another type of guerrilla gardening that every single one of us can do every day. Every morning fill up your pockets with sunlight and plant seeds of Light and Love through out the day. Good idea?

As we move from moment to moment through our day we are radiating energetic frequencies. These energy frequencies will have a lower or higher vibration depending on our thoughts, attitudes and intentions reflected in our emotions and amplified by our words and actions. Spiritual teachers have been telling us for centuries that this energy we emit shapes our experiences and impacts the world around us. Now science is demonstrating the physical truth of this.

An entire community of people might believe that it would be far better to have lovely green spaces throughout the city than to leave them empty, full of trash and weeds, or to cover them up with dirty concrete. But, someone has to go out and actually plant the seeds. A group of kids need to throw seed bombs into the vacant lots instead of trash and plant bulbs along the fences instead of spray painting ugly words. Groups of us have to go out with rakes and shovels and trash bags and heal the areas that have been beat up. We each need to choose to discard our trash in the trash can instead of dumping it in parks and on lawns and public sidewalks. We have to do stuff.

An entire community of people might believe that it is better to love than hate. Better to encourage others than to criticize them. Better to be kind than to bully. But, it is one thing to talk about it, another to live this way. This is when I am reminded yet again that each waking moment of my day I am actually choosing how to be in my world. Every day stories make the rounds about persons practicing Random Acts of Kindness, or doing gratitude challenges, or bringing people together to create peaceful solutions to conflict. More and more of us are choosing to take up the tools we need to clean up and heal the spaces inside us that have been beat up and are ugly and smelly, to plant seeds of Light within our own hearts, and then in our environments and within our families. We have to do stuff.

It is not easy work. Old habits of mind are stubborn. It is difficult to remember that our emotions are a result of our thinking not the other way round. Our egos are highly skilled at defending us from every perceived threat; this does not always work in our favor. Fear is sneaky and leaks in wherever it finds a crack or crevice unattended. Most fear is not the healthy stuff, but the paralyzing ooze from the Dark Side.

Yes, I like the idea of filling my pockets each morning with seeds of Light and planting them every chance I get throughout my day. It is a good metaphor to help me when Fear spins out her silky lies, or the hackles on my Ego rise. Slip my hand in my pocket and pull out a seed of Light–truth, love, gratitude, faith…plant it. Move on. It won’t blossom overnight. Like the vacant lots where those excited kids threw their seed bombs, it will take some time before the seedling breaks the soil, stretches to the light, grows leaves and buds, and finally opens to full flower. But this is where it begins. There will be no harvest without the seed. But with each seed there is hope for us and for our world, a promise that we can indeed create a world of beauty and love.

Go ahead. Fill up your pockets with sunlight or starlight. Do some guerrilla gardening today. Plant seeds of light and love.